MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Shelby
Foote, a novelist
and Civil War historian who rose to national prominence in a PBS-TV documentary
series on the Civil War, died yesterday at the age of 88, his family announced
today.

Foote, a native of Greenville, Mississippi,
died Monday night at Baptist Hospital in Memphis, said Footes
widow, Gwen.

A longtime resident of Memphis, Foote wrote
six novels but is best remembered for his three-volume, 3,000-word history
of the
Civil
War, The Civil War: A Narrative. Relying on a Southern storytellers
touch, he presented that history in a flowing, narrative style. He spent 20
years writing it.

That work landed Foote a leading role on an
11-hour TV documentary on the Civil War, first shown on the Public Broadcast
System in 1990. It was
produced
and directed by documentarian Ken Burns.

Other books by Foote include the historical
novel Shiloh (1952), which relates the story about the important Civil
War battle from multiple perspectives, both Union and Confederate, and Jordan
County: A Chronicle (1954).That year, Random House invited him
to write a one-volume history of the Civil War.

He accepted the job, but it grew into a three-volume
work not finished until 1974.

Foote was born Nov. 7, 1916, in Greenville,
a small Delta town with a literary bent. Novelist Walker
Percy — nephew of poet William
Alexander Percy, who adopted Walker
after the death of his parents — was a boyhood and lifelong friend, and
Foote, as
a young man, served as a “jackleg
reporter” for Hodding Carter on The
Delta Star. As a young man, he would also
get to know
William Faulkner.

During World War II, he was an Army captain of artillery until he lost his
commission for using a military vehicle without authorization to visit a female
friend and was discharged from the Army. He joined the Marines and was still
stateside when the war ended.

“The Marines had a great time with me,” he
said. “They
said if you used to be a captain, you might make a pretty good Marine.”

He
tried journalism again after World War II, signing on briefly with The Associated
Press in its New York bureau.

“I think journalism is a good experience,
having to turn in copy against deadline and everything else, but I dont
think one should stay in it too long
if what he wants to be is a serious writer,” Foote said in a 1990 interview.

Early
in his career, Foote took up the habit of writing by hand with an old-fashioned
dipped pen, and he continued that practice throughout his life. He kept bound
volumes of his manuscripts, all written in a flowing hand, on a bookshelf
in a homey bedroom-study overlooking a small garden at his Memphis
residence.

Foote said writing by hand helped him slow
down to a manageable pace and was more personal that using a typewriter, though
he often prepared a typed copy of his days writing after it was finished.

He moved to Memphis in 1953. In 1956, he married
Gwen Rainer, who survives him. Also surviving are Margaret Shelby Foote, the
authors daughter with his previous wife, Peggy DeSommes; and photographer
Huger Lee Foote, his son with Gwen Foote. Both live in Memphis.

Foote was
writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia in 1963 and at the University
of Memphis in 1968.
He
was a charter
member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

There will be a graveside service at 10 a.m.
Thursday (June 30) in Elmwood. Canale Funeral Directors has charge. Memorials
may be made to a charity of the donors choice.